A computer-implemented method for synthesizing an image includes capturing data from a scene and fusing grid-based representations of the scene from different encodings to inherit beneficial properties of the different encodings, The encodings include Lidar encoding and a high definition map encoding. Rays are rendered from fused grid-based representations. A density and color are determined for points in the rays. A volume rendering is employed for the rays with the density and color. An image is synthesized from the volume rendered rays with the density and the color.